D&D 5E Mearls on other settings

[Yaarel]

GOOD: Clerics in Dark Sun do not worship the Gods, but instead draw power from the elemental planes. They must select the Elemental Domain (provided below). They're starting gear is changed to the following [...].
BAD: Players cannot select the Cleric class.

One way or an other, it is necessary to effectively rewrite the rules as written in the Players Handbook for many campaign settings that differ from Forgotten Realms.

For example, in Athas, in the world of the Dark Sun campaign setting, the Cleric class cannot say for its ‘Channel Divinity’ class feature: ‘you gain the ability to channel divine energy directly from your deity’.

Every option that deviates from the Forgotten Realms setting, has little choice but to rewrite the current Players Handbook. One way or the other.

Either by modification or by elimination or by supplement or by substitution.

 

[Zardnaar]

4e Dark Sun is probably the template I would go with. It omitted the cleric and paladin (as well as the all the grid-filler divine classes) but I can easily see cleric getting returned with his elemental focus. That means we lose... paladin? Even then, I could see vengeance paladins being a thing. 4e certainly made room for bards (with casting!), druids, monks, sorcerers, warlocks, rangers, and a lot of other 4e oddities (warlords, wardens and shaman for example). As for races, each "athasian" race is easily a subrace of dwarves, elves, and halflings. Omit half-orcs and gnomes if you must, but replace them with muls and thri-kreen. Add the Mystic, a few rules for non-metal weapons and armor, and a few new backgrounds and you have a Dark Sun that fairly compatible with the PHB yet doing its own thing.

For Dragonlance, you just need to again replace half-orcs (man, half-orcs get no love!), and add a Halfling subrace called "Kender". Add a few subclasses to represent wizards of high sorcery and knights of Solomnia, and you're all set. Again, 3e did a good job of fitting in the 3e classes like sorcerer, monk, and barbarian; all you need to do is explain warlocks and its all good. Everything else is flavor and gravy.

If you are gonna make up stats for a halfling it doesn't need to be a subrace.

I think the real reason they excluded clerics in 4E was they could not be botherd rewriting the class as the PHB cleric was a meh fit on DS. 2E rewote the classes but 2E classes were not very complicated. In 5E terms all they have to do is 1 subclass with a different spell list like the land Druid for what element you pick as a class feature and change the wording on channel divinity to channel elements or something.

4E DS was not a good conversion and the 4E rules were not a good fit for DS full stop.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Eberron originally had its own planar structure and was its own thing. FR had rules that contradicts other settings so while in FR for example you follow those rules, if your FR character starts Spelljamming, gets sucked into Ravenloft or travels the plains then you follow those rules.

FR rules have always been the same as the base rules when it comes to Spelljamming and Ravenloft. As for the planes, during 3e, they did attempt to give the setting a unique planar set-up, but as FR had previously used the Great Wheel as its planar default in 1e and 2e, the planes they came up with were either exactly the same as the normal 3e Great Wheel ones, or thinly-veiled rip-offs ("We don't have a River Styx that flows through the lower planes, but a suspiciously similar 'River of Blood' that flows through our suspiciously similar lower planes!") that took literally minutes to reverse-engineer back to the Great Wheel if you wanted. Basically, from a planar viewpoint, it was simply stupid Primes from Faerun simply trying to make sense of the planes from their limited viewpoint and making a right mess of it. It's no surprise that for 5e they went right back to the old Great Wheel set up...

 

[Zardnaar]

FR rules have always been the same as the base rules when it comes to Spelljamming and Ravenloft. As for the planes, during 3e, they did attempt to give the setting a unique planar set-up, but as FR had previously used the Great Wheel as its planar default in 1e and 2e, the planes they came up with were either exactly the same as the normal 3e Great Wheel ones, or thinly-veiled rip-offs ("We don't have a River Styx that flows through the lower planes, but a suspiciously similar 'River of Blood' that flows through our suspiciously similar lower planes!") that took literally minutes to reverse-engineer back to the Great Wheel if you wanted. Basically, from a planar viewpoint, it was simply stupid Primes from Faerun simply trying to make sense of the planes from their limited viewpoint and making a right mess of it. It's no surprise that for 5e they went right back to the old Great Wheel set up...

Put it this way I like the 2E planes in FR over 3E and 4E.

Generally I think they should focus on the original material just updating the mechanics. On Athas defiling for example should create an ash circle when you cast a spell, the positive effect (for the defiler) and negative effects (for those caught in it) can vary by edition due to the mechanical changes.

 

[Yaarel]

Personally, I prefer to see every setting with its own Campaign Setting Players Handbook.

The Players Handbook would supply the most salient options for that setting. It would also recopy the more setting-neutral combat mechanics and so forth, because it is convenient to have multiple copies of that anyway.

Meanwhile, DMs can easily import options from one Campaign Setting Players Handbook into an other setting. Plug-and-play.

The current 5e Players Handbook should have the name ‘Forgotten Realms Players Handbook’, not worry about other settings. A later Forgotten Realms Players Handbook II would then supplement even more options and details that are pertinent to Forgotten Realms.

 

[robus]

For an individual DM, I agree. But we're talking Official Dungeons & Dragons (TM) settings, and I hold them to a higher standard than some DM's homebrew world. Official D&D should attempt to keep as much of the PHB valid as possible. It should find ways to include as many options as possible. Let the purist DM decide if HIS Dark Sun has tieflings, WotC's job it to give me a reason why they could be there.

We'll have to part ways here. We already have a kitchen sink setting in the FR. I think other settings can and should limit the available options and, optionally, provide new races, subclasses and backgrounds. The core rules of 5e are unaffected but some rich new combinations become available. The M:tG pdfs are an example of that.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Dark Sun, as I said before, isn't really a D&D setting. It's a separate game that uses the skeleton of the D&D rules. They should have cut the cord and been made it's own game. It's shotgun marriage to the D&D rules has hindered more than helped.

Dark Sun should be viewed more like Gamma World than Dragonlance, imho.

Only just started playing a 5e Dark Sun conversion here on ENWorld, so not that familiar with it, but I wonder if it would work well in Savage Worlds. I hear Eberron works great there (per Manifest Zone podcast and Keith Baker).

 

[KahlessNestor]

I could see monks meditating in the harsh wilderness of Dark Sun.

Perhaps like the Egyptian ascetic stylites.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Couldn't you make the arguement about 4E doing that though? More or less was a new game with the D&D logo on it and would perhaps been better off as its own thing (D&D tactic?).

2E was kind of odd by D&D standards it actually had more splat than 3E and 4E (probably 3E +4E combined). I'm not 100% sure but I think they tried to make it almost like a generic RPG system as 2E was very creative in that way and the designers could almost do anything they wanted.

Funny thing is 4E was very incomplete when it landed and you could play a complete 2E DS game with less material than what I would consider you would need for a decent 4E game. For a good DS game you would need

core 2E books
Complete Psionists
Darksun boxed set
Darksun Monstrous Compendium

Anything more than that is gravy. When we 1st played it we just used the boxed set+ psionist book+core books.

What would you consider the bare minimum for a good 4E game? Core books+ arcane/martial/divine books and whatever book fixed the math from the core books (Monster Vault?) access to DDI (basically all of the 4E books).

The hardcore 4E fans seem to like it because it is different to ye olde D&D, personally I have the same opinion on Darksun, I like it because its different. I'm sure fans of the other game worlds have the same opinion if its a bit different (ie not FR, GH, DL or Mystara).

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, applies to real life as well (getting hell drunk, using certain drugs, invading Iraq etc).

I started with 4e. All you needed was the core 3, or the Essentials core 3. Just like with Pathfinder or any other D&D. Sounds like you needed way more for DS.

 

[Sadras]

Official D&D should attempt to keep as much of the PHB valid as possible. It should find ways to include as many options as possible.

This! My gully dwarf Paladin with the Oath of the Ancients and Sage background with the Inspiring Leader feat is going to be so awesome.